The product life cycle (PLC) describes the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. It proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines and requires a multitude of skills, tools and processes.


Market Introduction

This stage is characterized by a low growth rate of sales as the product is newly launched and consumers may not know much about it.

Growth

The growth stage is the period during which the product eventually and increasingly gains acceptance among consumers, the industry, and the wider general public.

Maturity

During this stage, sales growth has started to slow down, and the product has already reached widespread acceptance in the market, in relative terms. 


Decline Stage

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Brand

1. Brand

 - a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name.

2. Goal of a brand

 - to protect the strength of your brand so that it continues to create value for your company.

3. How can having a strong brand help your company?

• Members of your target audience will be more apt to associate your firm with the specific intangibles your brand conveys – intangibles that are important to them. As a result, they will feel good about doing business with you. Those intangibles might include good value, reliability, success, luxury, hipness, social consciousness, liberal thinking, conservative thinking, creative, upper class, and so on.

• Your brand will help foster an emotional relationship between your firm and members of your target audience. This relationship will make them more inclined to do business with you and to remain loyal to your firm, which means that they are more likely to provide you with repeat business.

• Members of your target audience will be more apt to spend money with your business rather than with one of your competitors. This will be true even if your services cost more.

•Your brand will help reduce the amount you must spend on marketing because your firm will be a known quantity to members of your target audience. Therefore, you will not have to work as hard to sell your services to them.

4. How does a company build a successful brand?

 - Consider who you are, what you do, and why it matters. This is key to being able to put forward a brand that attracts and keeps loyal customers. For example, if the core principles of your company are to manufacture in a sustainable manner, using fair paid labor and donating to charities, this ethos must also pervade your products.



 - Think about your opportunities and threats. Check out what the competitors are doing. Ask yourself these questions:
What are the competitors doing that your product or service is not?
Is this a good or a bad thing?
If it is bad (i.e., your business is lagging behind), how can you remedy this - branding will not be the sole solution, as there must be substance behind your branding claims.
What gaps are there in the industry that your product or service meets? How can you use branding to jazz this up and let folks know what you're doing?

 - Get a real face. This means, who is the human face of your business? For example, Paul Newman or Richard Branson are excellent examples of real faces of businesses. Does your company have a charismatic symbol head or should you hire an actor or other spokesperson to become part of your company's branding?

 - Decide who your target audience is. Branding should be targeted to the age group that your product or service is aimed at.

 - Determine how you will execute your plan. Use your business' graphic artists, designers, publicists to put together a decent plan. Or, if it's you alone as an individual, create a plan that outlines:
Logo
Figurehead
By-lines (catchy phrases summing up your business)
Jingles
Color
Font
Where the branding goes - on the product and associated advertising